Drug rehab centers have been a frequent target of attacks in Mexico’s bloody gang wars.
But Wednesday’s massacre at a facility in the city of Irapuato still managed to shock a nation trapped by escalating violence.
Police said at least four men armed with high-powered weapons arrived in a vehicle shortly after 5 p.m. M., They broke into the interior, ordered everyone on the floor, and then cut them, execution style. At least 26 people died and five were injured.
Authorities suspect that the assault was part of a fierce territorial battle between two criminal organizations, the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the powerful New Generation Jalisco cartel, which has transformed Guanajuato, once peaceful, into one of the deadliest states in Mexico.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised on Thursday not to “abandon” Guanajuato and suggested that state authorities investigate possible links between local officials and organized crime.
“There has to be a division, the line must be drawn between criminality and authority,” he said.
Criminal groups have long undermined the justice system in Mexico by paying police, prosecutors, judges, and politicians.
The attack at the “Recovering my life” rehabilitation center was one of the bloodiest incidents since López Obrador took office 19 months ago. It came as the President celebrated the second anniversary of the overwhelming election that brought him to power. In a national speech, he triumphantly cited statistics he said showed that crime was slowing down.
But critics questioned what they called the president’s selective use of numbers that downplayed the still-increasing number of homicides and other crimes.
Homicides across the country rose 54% to a record 34,668 in 2019 from 22,545 in 2016.
In the state of Guanajuato, a center for the production of automobiles and other heavy manufactures, the increase was much greater during that same period. Homicides more than tripled from 1,110 to 3,540.
That gave Guanajuato, which is home to 5.8 million people, the highest number of homicides of any state last year. Only two of the country’s 32 states, Baja California and Colima, which are much smaller, had higher homicide rates.
In a recent radio interview, Mexican Atty. General Alejandro Gertz Manero said federal authorities would investigate why Guanajuato had become a “hell of violence.”
The governor of the state, Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo, said that the attack on the rehabilitation center demonstrated that “today more than ever, the intervention of federal and state authorities is necessary as the only means to successfully face this situation.”
López Obrador said: “It is our responsibility to protect the people of Guanajuato.”
But he did not send additional troops or the federal police, noting that National Guard troops were already on the scene. The president said he did not intend to “interfere” with local police decisions in Guanajuato, a state controlled by the opposition National Action Party.
Wednesday’s incident occurred less than a month after an attack on another drug rehab center in Irapuato, a city of 570,000 people 170 miles northwest of Mexico City. Gunmen killed 10 in the June 7 assault.
Both centers were among the numerous unregistered treatment facilities in the state, authorities said. Guanajuato state security chief Alvar Cabeza de Vaca said this week that some of the clandestine centers are linked to organized crime.
Drug rehab facilities have been attacked many times in the 13 years since Mexico declared war on transnational drug gangs, sparking a bloody civil conflict that is on track to claim a record number of lives this year.
In 2010, an assault on a Tijuana rehabilitation center left 13 dead. A 2008 attack at a rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juárez killed nine.
The targeting of such centers is typically linked to conflicts involving drug dealing. Rehabilitation facilities are often full of recovering addicts who once sold drugs to help finance habits. Their past or present links to organized crime can make them targets.
Increasingly, Mexico’s violence is fueled less by battles linked to lucrative trafficking routes to the United States and more by competition in a growing domestic drug trade and other illicit industries, including fuel theft and scams. extortion.
In some parts of Mexico, officials estimate that up to 90% of homicides are linked to local drug sales.
In the state of Guanajuato, the Jalisco New Generation cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima gang and various branches have been fighting for control of the sale of marijuana and methamphetamine, as well as dominance of other rackets. Mexican media also reported that the Santa Rosa organization, which specializes in fuel theft, has clashed with the Nueva Generación group over drug trafficking routes through the state of Guanajuato from the Pacific coast to the border between United States and Mexico.
Special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez contributed to this report.
